Pursuing the Heritage of Christ in Your Family | Interview with Michael and Camilla

I and Camila both are convinced that our greatest role our highest responsibility as a mother and a father is to give our children the gospel is to give the word of God and the word of Christ to our children so that they too can give that Legacy that treasure to their children as well uh and there are countless verses in God's word which have really inspired me that have to do with giving the gospel or telling the world wonders of the Lord to the Next Generation Um that that essentially captured my my heart and our heart my name is Sherry Christian wife and thankful mom to 10 incredible kids I'm the author of the blog and YouTube channel our life homeschooling where I share homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms I believe that motherhood is Ministry and homeschooling is simply an extension of parenting my passion is to cheer on other moms who are at home doing the most important work of all raising the Next Generation for the glory of God hi everyone welcome back to our life homeschooling I am so excited about the guests that I have on today this is Michael and Camila from Christ Heritage home we are going to be talking today about pursuing the heritage of Christ in your home Micha and Camila are from Denmark they are very much Pioneers in home education in the area where they live and I just loved this interview this is an interview you definitely want to grab your husband and have him listen to this because um we're hearing from a homeschooled dad as well as a mom and this is something that is just going to help bring your whole family together they're going to talk a lot about whole family education whole fames learning together and I was so encouraged by this interview so let's just jump right in hi Michael and Camila so nice to see you good too hey Sherry good to see you thanks for having us on yeah thanks for joining me I really excited to learn more about your family so I'm just going to go ahead and let you introduce yourselves um tell us about your if you could tell us about your website about your Instagram page and about your family yeah absolutely we'd love to uh I guess I'll just start and we'll just supplement each other as we go uh I'm Michael I'm 33 I'm American you area I'm 38 and danish born and raised in Denmark yeah long story short we met through a Christian Youth Ministry a voluntary Ministry youth I guess music Ministry you might call it and got to know each other through that and uh yeah the rest is history I mean we could give a lot more details and maybe we will in our blog post at least a couple of the fine more romantic details um but it has to do with a letter which was sent which was given to her at an airport which started very romantic it was very cinematic um and that started it all but we have come a long way we've married for 12 years is that right right we have seven children ages is 10 months almost 10 months he has 10 he's from the 12th so yep uh to 11 four boys um and we have yeah three girls another girl on the way so number eight okay yeah we have an Instagram profile and a website called Christ Heritage home it's kind of a new endeav that we've been working with um camil and I fell in love over blogging we were both bloggers way back in the day oh interesting I read all of her blogs the first all my blogs the first night anding each other we felt like we knew each other oh we have an interest in writing and we also have a desire to encourage other families who would like to give the heritage of Christ The Gospel and also the word of God to their children and to the generations to come we're also an international family and so that's a profile which um which is interesting and also can benefit people over here in Denmark and people over seas and around the world who speak English so we do some stuff in Danish some stuff in English yeah yeah I've been on your website it's really um it's really interesting and I'm kind of GNA Jump Ahead a little bit in our outline but I want to ask you about the name Christ's Heritage Home how did you come up with that what's the meaning behind that yeah so there was um there's a church in the Philippines called Christ Heritage Church and from The Moment I Saw the name there was something that lit up in me um I knew that there was something in the name Heritage that that really lit a fire in me um I and Camila both are convinced that our greatest role our highest responsibility as a mother and a father is to give our children the gospel is to give the word of God and the word of Christ to our children so that they too can give that Legacy that treasure to their children as well uh and there are countless verses in God's word which have really inspired me that have to do with giving the gospel or telling the wonders of the Lord to the Next Generation Um that that essentially captured my my heart and our heart and we realized if we were going to start anything as a family whether it be a blog or a business or a Ministry then um this this encapsulates what we're about it's about Christ it's about giving the word of Christ to our children and equipping them and even others who are in the same boat as we are um do the same um so it it it has more than just the the Here and Now Dimension but also the in the future the generational Dimension which can easily be be lost on us in the in the culture we live in today which is very much immediate instant gratification what's going on now I want immediate results that I can see instead of the more biblical long-term agricultural view right of sewing into Generations right the long game the long game is missed it's the the short term is is what a lot of people are thinking about well I love that um and we've I think the same thing happened with my husband and me when we started homeschooling our whole Viewpoint shifted and um you mentioned verses of scripture that talk about reaching generations and I know Psalm 78 was one that was um pivotal for us because it talks about we'll tell the Next Generation about the Glorious Deeds of the Lord about his power and his mighty wonders and um it just gave us a new vision and um I love seeing other families catching on to that as well and I know you all have put a lot of thought into your family's purpose and plan and um I was just looking on your website you have three pillars that are kind of the foundation of your family life can you share those with everyone yeah so in in short and it's it's kind of an U it shouldn't be rocket science to boil down what you are about as a family it should be pretty simple um but it was it was actually harder than I thought when we first sat down and thought how how should we present our family to the world um but when I look at our life and when we started Christ Heritage Home uh it became very obvious that there were three fundamental pillars um that that make up the foundation of our family life that if anyone came in from the outside if anyone was to fly on the wall in our bus and yes we have a bus we just got a bus because we didn't have room in our other other car and we had I can relate we have a 15 passenger van so here in Denmark it requires a special license when you upgrade over nine seats so I just went through training now he's going through it oh wow that's interesting so if you're a passenger in our bus or if you're eating dinner with us or watching us put our kids down to sleep at night what what would characterize our family on an average day an average week um and and what is holding us up um and it were these three pillars and I'll just mention them and if anyone's interested they can read a little more on the website and maybe we can get into some more details a little further on in the conversation um but number one is raising our children biblically um founded upon God's word uh the second one is a life that is anchored in and lived in the body of Christ in our local of church in our local church here in Denmark Mark um a natural cheerful i' like to say wonderful part of our children's childhood and the backbone of our schedule actually so very practical um the church to menion and then the third um Foundation is whole family Christ centered home education and that's not to say that there are no individual elements in our home education there certainly are because a family though a collective unit is composed of IND individuals of persons endowed with worth with personhood and with unique personalities gifts and needs um but we recognize the Great Value and also the you could almost say it's it's um the logistical convenience of educating as a whole family so we like to be together as a family we like to do things together as a family but man there's just nothing more magical than learning as a family those pillars yeah yeah wow I love that um I love the connection to a a strong biblical church that's so important for accountability um and also the whole family approach um I after talking to you guys I said to my husband maybe I should have you on he does not like to be in front of a camera but in our family um I think it's easy to look at different people's gifts and sometimes to think well how how would this work in our family and but I what we've learned over time is to take the strengths that each of us have and use them to our advantage my husband's like a very handson mechanical type person so a lot of the the time he spends with our kids and the education he hands down to our kids is doing all those Hands-On things and my passion is more just bookwork and I like doing that kind of thing and you know instead of looking at oh we're so different um finding your strengths and working together as a team and it's going to look different in every family because both husband and wife have different strengths um but I love the whole family approach um I think that makes a huge difference when the whole family is involved yeah and also just recognizing an often times overlooked fact uh of of the way God is designed life the family is meant to be a family and I don't know this might sound funny but I don't know how it is over there in the states I I was 21 so I most of my adult life in Denmark um but over here there's a a very aggressively individualistic culture where it's just assumed and taken for granted that the family splits up the family lives individual lives and there are you know meals times together or parties and so forth but there's Sports on your own and there are work on your own and we we just we just want to to set a different example by being together as much as nurturing relationships because if spending most of your day doing different things there's not going to be a lot of connection you know right right and um I I know that's something for us that it's brought our family together more over time um because there's some things we it's I would say it's very individualistic here in the states as well um but there are things that we've had to say no to a lot of really great things um because we know that it would take away from our family time we have such a short period of time to influence our children and it's just something we really want to prioritize um so I want to ask you since the whole whole family education is so important to you can you just talk about what a typical day looks like in your home I'll take this one depends on Michael's the bread winner so he's out of the house most of the time he's just had we have very very generous leave and parental leave here in Denmark too because of the whole you know equality of genders and yeah oh right a lot but generally I'm the one who's here um and so I mean we both get up early get up before the kids get in the word get a head start on the day and then they kind of start to trickle in usually the little kids come first and they've learned now that we sit in this so this is like our office and Michael can work from home sometimes um but they just kind of trickle in and they lay on the floor with the baby or they you know grab a roll to snack on or something but they know that that's our time Bible time and they just kind of file in but then and so the older kids mostly but the little one we have a four-year-old and he's starting to catch it oh I haven't done my morning habits yet you knows and so they're expected to get dressed and brush their teeth and make their bed um and then I've had to kind of enforce that breakfast is the last thing you do because otherwise they get hung up on breakfast and we get to Bible time around 8:30 and they haven't you know made their bed they haven't gotten dressed they haven't gone to their chor and um so we don't have any animals so we don't have anything that's time sensitive but we still like to get those chores done in the morning so they like with the four oldest take turns a week at a time doing dishes emptying trash sorting laundry and picking up like our main living area and so we can have reset for the day and then we sit down at 8:30 um for Bible time now so that's we are reading through the Katherine boss story Bible oh same with yes I've done that for I'm most of our homeschooling years we've done got a new copy because the last few pages are missing the cover has been off that sounds like ours too to the end of it again and so I'm like we're not gonna be able to finish Revelation I like to think that you know since it's falling apart maybe the kids Souls aren't falling yes right right yes that's right yeah no so so we sit down for the Bible time and our memory verse sometimes we sing that's something that we've never really gotten in the habit of but I've tried to kind of you know do like himm of the week or him of the month or like we just did A Mighty Fortress Is Our God here with the reformation and yeah or Reformation day and then we have our read aloud or um we've been kind of focusing on read aloud because there's been a lot going on in the last year with our youngest who was born with Down syndrome and a heart defect so it's been we've been a little bit out of routine and we're trying to get back in so we've really been focusing on read aloud that because I just have seen how much that draws my heart to the kids and I know that if I want to be able to teach them anything we need our hearts need to be connected because otherwise I'm just going to be a drill sergeant and it's gonna read aloud and or we do some history reading or geography or composer study picture study all those you know all those things um and then what we have done is we do kind of an individual Sprint then after that where they kind of have to cycle through copy work and um we do math lessons like I sit with them one after one or they do narration we've been trying I would love it if they could narrate to me but logistically and somehow it seems that they're also more detailed if record them and so we've been doing recorded narrations and they like to just sit there and tell what we read and what a great idea I should try that my kids would probably love doing that they I I don't they're always like I want to narrate first and so they record it on my phone and so they have to take turns recording it on my phone that and the level of detail sometimes compared to when you know if we all sit there like okay okay who would like to tell me what they you know what they heard they're like uh I don't know I don't remember we kind of try to do as much as we can before we hit lunchtime and I think it's a general thing I've observed that we generally speak speaking eat lunch earlier in Denmark and so we usually hit lunchtime around 11:30 no one can make it past 11:30 yeah L and then afternoons are spent either we go out um like visiting with friends or we go to the library or we do like a bigger project that doesn't really fit in in the morning um baking or crafty things sewing we just got a sewing room set up and so we did a what was it called sewing machine license all the bigger kids got a license and I I just kind of a course for them to practice Yeah complete with your own little driver's license with the a little license with their name on it so you that's some what is that that's something that's foreign to me getting a license for the sewing machine are you sorry I miss I made up oh you made it up gotcha to school I remember we had to go through a course before we could use the sewing machines in sewing class or I guess this was like back in third grade okay remember but you had to like go through a course and so they had to like um I had print out these pages and they had to like sew straight lines and they had to sew in a circle and oh that's well you know it probably gives them a sense of accomplishment when they see that piece of paper yeah I like that that's really cool I had to make little um what are those even called like little rice bags or you know like those um be bags yeah yeah the little you can juggle with and yeah so I think we have about 25 of those oh I can relate we have so many homemade projects around here and um sometimes it makes things messy but it also means kids are being creative which is good so so um how about some practical can you give some practical advice for other families who want to have a more whole family approach um because I I know I think a lot of families want to be closer together but maybe just don't know how to go about it read great books together like that there's nothing like it and it's how I don't know I can still remember one of the first I mean it's not like we haven't read before but the first time it really hit me like this matters was when we read maybe two and a half years ago we read the railway children yes such a beautiful like it has a special place in my heart because it was um about six months after my dad passed away from lung cancer and I'd been in a really dark time of just we had he passed away we had a baby we moved we changed Church like it was just a lot and then that book really I feel like is one it brought us back together and I feel like I gave my children their mother back through that book and just the whole story of that Mother's Love oh I'm going to cry so um heart for her children was my heart for my children and so that really just kind of I just saw how that mattered more than math lessons more than anything else was just having that connection where we and we have referred back to that book so many times and so that was when I realized this matters basically more than anything else and then in times of stresses or you know when you start to when the doubts creep in you're like oh we we need to do more more math we definitely need to do more math and then I have to remind myself no we need to we need to still finish the chapter cuz math can wait but we need to yeah just read and it's just been so wonderful and then get get out in nature explore make memories yeah that's hard to follow up on but uh if I could say one thing which might be a little um from left field but and I also don't know if any men are going to watch this or hear this but I think some I have some dads yes to the to the mothers who are listening who and also of course the men if they are uh the men need to get involved uh it's something that I'm passionate about and that really fills with joy when I see men just scooping up their kids and their wife and saying let's go on an adventure you know I think of bbo bagin in the hav saying we're do this I'm going and you know if you do that as a man your wife and your children are going to follow and they're going to love every second of it if you're a cheerful Dad if you're a calm Dad if you're an adventurous dad and if you're a Godly dad then man they're going to learn they're going to soak it in and they're never going to forget it so dads if you're listening scoop them up that's going to be the bottom line scoop them up yes yeah so true and and I think too just having the support I know my husband has been my biggest cheerleader on the days when it's really tough and there are days when it's tough because we're doing something countercultural and um it's similar I'm in a similar situation my husband is the bread winner so I am home with the children a lot um but on some of the days that he would he would come home and I would just be beside myself and he would just say no you can't quit this is too good good what can I do to help you what can how can I I'll do science I'll do this whatever um this is he just saw how good it was for our kids and um he was the biggest cheerleader and doing what he could when he came home even though he had to be away for some of the day um so I think even just having that kind of support is such a big deal and not everyone has that um but that is a way that men can step up to the place and um and just be supportive in their children's education absolutely there I I don't think any I mean yes some homeschool moms they do have to do it on their own in a sense but then um when you know you have your husband's full support and like you said he is your biggest cheerleader and you know the days where you feel like you're floundering he's like you're doing a great job and I'm like are you kidding me I know um that just means the world yes you know and we we have had times you know where where I feel like this is going terrible where where he was UN leave and he just wrote down all the learning opport or not opportunities but all the learning that happened that I didn't see because I was like oh I'm just doing this or we're just doing this oh I'm just letting them help bake that's no like that's not or this you know conversation that was actually really valuable and you know they learned a lot but you don't think of it as learning where he just followed our days and wrote down here's all the learning that happened today and I was like oh like it really helped me also okay a lot more goes on than what I realize so true that is so true I'm really curious about um your influence in Denmark you're very much pioneering home education in Denmark do you know other families that are homeschooling are there uh co-ops what does it look like in your area um yes we actually in our church we are in a very very small congregation so we're the only ones who homeschool there um we have been a in a church previously where more families were homeschooling um so we do have a network of fellow Believers but if you look at the broad picture of schooling in Denmark like schools um and then you narrow it into homeschooling we're like down here and then you look at Christian homeschoolers it's like a little sliver um so we're very small and you don't have the big organized co-ops the co-ops that we know about we we were a part of starting one actually that must have been like five years ago oh six years ago elano had just been born okay um um which was basically we met in the morning for a few hours and did some learning or like mostly just games or activities but not like you know not where we do a Spanish class here and like so not that more about it was more about having a social network of other homeschoolers um and so we drove almost an hour to get to that because we just needed to find like-minded people yes and and I know of a couple of groups like that but there aren't a lot I think what was it we we looked at it and I think the total of and I don't think it's homeschooled families it's I think homeschooled children it's like, 1300 okay wow inmark wow out of a population of just under six million so it's very very small and it's um it has been on the rise like just five years ago I think it was half that and so it has growing and we know families who started homeschool because schooling because of the pandemic where they you know they were home and then they were like let's just continue this this is great yeah yeah I would say here it's really exploded since the pandemic I think some people started seeing what their kids were being taught in school and how much less time and how they could do it better at home and same thing they just decided to keep going with it and um it's really it is really exciting to see specifically families that want to give their kids a Christ centered a Christian education um it's exciting to see that grow and I hope that that is what happens in your area of Denmark as well um so I'm I'm so glad to see a family like yours that's so passionate about it um helping other people what you said about starting a co-op that was very much our story it was just a couple other families and we were meeting in each other's homes every week for just the friendships and um and just having little lessons yeah not acade academic or anything um but and that just having that support it just slowly slowly grew and and now it's a pretty established Co-op but um yes so encouraging to hear your story and um can you just tell people one more time about your the name of your website where they can find you and your Instagram page yeah absolutely our website is Christ heritag home.org um that's a a Blog which we would like to do more with um but time is short um so we hope to be posting more there in the future uh in English and in Danish and then we have an Instagram profile which is our main Outlet uh Christ's Heritage home and you can find us there give us a follow comment on our our reals and our posts we love to write people back and connect um also with Believers and other homeschoolers around the world so and there's probably more activity on the Instagram than the blog okay yeah I've Loved um following you and your reels and posts have been just so encouraging to me and Nelson as well so thank you so much thanks for joining me I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy life to share your story and your family with my viewers so thank you than Youk you we've been following along with you for a while so thank you so much for all the encouragement and all the work you put into uh yeah we used your fall copy work last year oh great oh I'm so glad you for over a year I think oh wow oh thank you thank you for listening in today I know I was so encouraged by Michael and Camila and their heart for Christ Heritage home and pursuing Christ in their family in their home I got a ton of new ideas and most of all was just reminded of the beauty of a family learning together if you like this kind of content you can always find me here on YouTube our life homeschooling where I share one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms you can also head over to the website rlif homeschooling tocom to find tons of information about getting started in homeschooling book lists morning time ideas life skills ideas so head on over there if you're looking for more support thanks for watching I'll see you next week